Consumers are accessing an increasing number of websites to expand their information about new products and services, and to make decisions about which products or services to purchase. For example, a consumer interested in fashion may first encounter a set of designer outfits on Pinterest, ask her friends on Facebook which ones they like best, search fashion blogs for more information about the designer using the Google search engine, and then finally go to a local boutique or department store to make an in-store purchase. Some of these channels are more effective than others, but it remains difficult for marketers offering goods and services to determine the combination of multiple marketing channels and messages that are most effective in converting a consumer's interest in a product or service into a purchase. The information that these marketers do get concerning these various marketing channels is limited to basic data, such as the number of visits on the landing page, or what the site owner chooses to sell to the marketer or ad agencies working with the marketer. The marketer is quite limited in its ability to link this data with data from other channels in order to gain a comprehensive view of the multichannel marketing process in which its customers and potential customers are engaged. The ability to gain further insight into the interplay between these various marketing channels may be seen as highly desirable to a marketer seeking to increase its return on investment for marketing expenditures, and to better analyze the results of its previous and current marketing campaigns.
Many marketing channels used by marketers today offer a URL “landing page” for a consumer who is interested in a product or service being described. These may be presented, for example, as a hyperlink with text such as “click here for more information” or the like. QR codes may also be used in order to encourage smartphone and tablet users to visit the landing page, since consumers using these devices may easily navigate to the desired site by directing the device's camera toward the QR code and activating the associated software to read the code. While these methods may direct a consumer to the appropriate landing page, they may not provide the marketer with information about the movement of the consumer from the original advertisement sparking the consumer's interest to the landing page. This information in particular would be of interest to marketers seeking to improve their marketing results and to perform better analytics regarding their marketing campaigns.
While additional information about consumer engagement as described above would be valuable to marketers, any use of this information must take place in a manner that is compliant with privacy laws, regulations, and industry best practices. In particular, use of personal identifying information (PII) concerning customers—such as name, address, telephone number, and email address—is tightly restricted in online transactions. Thus any attempt to better understand consumer behavior in an online, multi-channel marketing environment must ensure that PII of the consumer is not used in any manner that would compromise the privacy of the consumer.